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tv   Reliable Sources  CNN  November 25, 2012 8:00am-9:00am PST

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2008. these attacks are the focus of a documentary i was brought to be a part of. it's called "terror in mumbai." it was originally going to beerieded on hbo. but will be aired here tonight at 9:00 p.m. thanks for tuned in. i'll see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." there's a raging debate over the republican party and violence in the northeast but the medial march toward the fiscal cliff keeps hit a detour. >> they got off to an optimistic start. >> the country faces drastic tax cuts. >> let's get right to the ia sex scandal and the breaking news scandal overnight. >> today we're learning how much
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access. >> you find a guy who says -- >> jill kelley from tampa, florida -- >> our journalist is priorities are out of whack and did david petraeus get unusual treatment from the veterans he cultivated. some ignorant teenagers wrote horrible things about president obama on twitter, messages that were exposed by the website jezebel. but did they go too far in trying to get these students punished. plus bill o'reilly called him one of the biggest race baiters in the media. kuhnen very sags with eric degreens. i'm howard kurtz and this is "reliable sources."gans. i'm howard kurtz and this is "reliable sources."
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the president of the united states and. automatically takes effect in just of o every a month if they can't face an agreement. the health of the american economy and maybe if it goes down to the wire the fiscal cliff story will receive 1/10 theed my ya attention as the scandalous saga of dave and paula and john and jill. joining us now here the washington is jane hall. bob cusack, managing editor of the capital nooup the hill. and amy argetsinger. why has it become synonymous with bore dom? >> well, there's no sex with it. that's the bottom line. this story is wild. the petraeus story has gone in a lot of different directions. first he resigns. then we find out why. then we find out about the other
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woman. the inappropriate e-mails. >> you're saying that barack obama meeting with john boehner and mitch mcconnell doesn't quite get readers as excited? >> not as titillating. >> this is what the election was fought over and yet i have the impression that a lot of the country is yawning but really many of the journalists covering the story are oning. >> there's a story about low how the mighty are falling. privacy, security, while covering the sex. >> are you suggesting that the bigger issues are actually a bit of a shall we say figure lea le? there are bigger issues there but the problem is the fiscal cliff is extremely important. it's interesting to me that it's ben bernanke who dubbed it. i would have thought a reporter
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would have dubbed it. >> as a consumer of newses, when you see stories about the fiscal cliff do you go clicking off to someone else? >> no. i don't. i try. i try my darnest. i pick up the stories and think i'm going to understand it for once. it's a big, big story if you're covering economic on a national stage. i think it is getting covered a lot yochl ku. blame the media if readers are going to be clicking more or turning more to story about petraeus. >> the problem wo budget stories is it's incremental. every day only a little bit happens and the next day slight movement. it doesn't have the natural arc on a holiday thriller. now there was a pew research survey the over day. fiscal cliff 3rks 3%. that's pretty good. 28% the situation in benghazi.
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22.. and the other 78% are lying. come on. 22%. anybody buying that? >> i saw that. thought it was interesting that they thought the petraeus story was important. unlike the lewinsky story. they thought this story had more to it. >> the lieu win skin story did lead to a presidential picture. >> but i thank may not be telling the truth. one thing john boehner did say is one message out of the selection is people want us to do something. they want to end the gridlock. so i think there is this mysteriousness. >> i asked about the petraeus scandal and he said it's funful we should just enjoy it. you know, no apologies for diving in to the details. there's this incredible cast of characters. it's not just paula broadwell and jill kelley. it's her sister who's now hired
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gloria allred? should we not feel embarrassed by this? >> a lot of the reporters in washington, they're coming back from the campaign trail and if they have a choice what they're going to pick. pe trail or medicare, all these policy changes, they're proing going to pick that because they know that's going to get more clicks. >> i would also say it's a very popular figure with washington media establishment. >> and that was no accident. >> i would argue that it's possible the petraeus scandal is more engrossing than it is for the rest of the country. just the conversation i had with someone in richmond who was kind of hazy on who paula broad well was. >> the pe trail story is hotter. take a look at this one that airs the other weekend. >> one woman stands at the center of it all. jill kelley seen here leaving her home in tampa, florida,
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walking down some stairs and getting into a car. seen here in the same clip doing the same thing because it's the only footage we have of her. >> okay. need i say more? >> that's the best i've seen in months. that nailed it. >> television does do that when it's the only clip we have. >> the only problem is that congress doesn't act until it's right up ton a deadline and you have another month. you may see a satellite skit of john boehner and nancy pelosi. who knows. they could be here right up until new year's eve. >> there's another somewhat serious story that's gotten a lot of media attention and that is what's going to happen to the republican party who's lost two straight presidential elections and it's interesting to me that some of the conservative commentators seem to be shifting a little bit. sean hannity has evolved. charles krien jaimer says let's just do amnesty.
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it's interesting to me that the pundits who are often more visible than any of the presidential wannabe candidates are changing their toon. >> i think they're thanking their tune because they saw the disastrous results with mitt romney. i think it was very interesting that hannity said that. what's interesting to me is the blood lining that's going on as to who's to blame. i think a lot of people think we have to do something. we have to figure this one out. >> so is this acourse correction by the people on the right who spout off for a living? we're accustomed certainly to politicians who bob and weave and move toward the center after a primary and so forth. it seems to me some of the pun dids are doing that as well. >> they are and they like to win and when they lose they have to assist, lessons learned. it was interesting that he said, maybe we should tax millionaires. >> also if year a pundit, i mean if you're going to get attention
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you need to say something is that's a little counterintuitive. it's a natural progression. >> maybe it's a volume here for people like crystal and hannity and crown hammer and others. they may be engage nds a spin anyway. we haven't heard a public word from mitt romney. he has vanished from the stage. other republicans are beating up on him. the only thing we did hear was the conversation he had with donors about president obama getting gifts from hispanics, women, gais, hat the spotlight been shifted back to rush limbaugh and everybody else who pines for a living? >> i think so. republicans want mitt romney to now fade away. president obama has invited romney over the white house. that hasn't happened yet. republican don't want him at the white house.
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i do think now we're going go back to the pundits and they're shifti shifting. >> when you have bobby jindal saying i don't think they are the way to win, the whole argument they want treats like animals they want treats, that's what laura ingram said. >> this is interesting. i would not argue with you. >> i'm sorry. that was ann coulter. >> let's quote her accurately. i would not argue with you that many republicans would want to kind of whitewash or erase mitt romney from the election and pren frooend he didn't happen. what's interesting to me is do you think they're dying to get an interview with mitt romney and get his take going forward or is he just considered because he lost, we kind of brand people a loser even though, you know, it was a relatively close election. >> listen. before election day people were talking about who we should be looking for in 2016. yeah, absolutely. >> maybe that had something to do with the fact that chris
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christie was playing himself on "saturday night live" look forward to the leekz four years from now. what's interesting we talked about the coverage by fox news and msnbc. fox obviously favoring mitt romney and being negative toward bam. the reverse at msnbc. pew has come out with some final weeks figures. this is on steroids. you have fox airing in the last seven days, only 5% positive about the president. msnbc, zero. not a single positive story about mitt romney. what does that tell you? >> well, it tells you that the fox and the anti-fox have been prospering and it will be interesting to see. you know, i think it's very interesting the moment of truth when meg and kelly chachlk karl rove and they say we are a news organization, we are going to prove that. it's going to be interesting, what will be the role of msnbc. will they be critical of barack
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obama paubecause he's been elec. >> when you take it out of the political hothouse is there room for views or are they going to play to the base? >> obviously everyone is playing to the base and there's these batters around the water cooler but now i think things have calmed down a little bit. >> all right. we hope it heats up again. we'll have plenty to talk about. the pundits who botched the election big-time. is there any punishment for being embarrassingly wrong. that's right. so it's like i won. sure. oh my gosh i won!!! i won!!! [ male announcer ] get a $100 walmart gift card when you buy any android or windows 8 smartphone. through december 1st. from america's gift headquarters. walmart. through december 1st. when you take a closer look.. ...at the best schools in the world... ...you see they all have something very interesting in common.
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in any other profession if you are wrong, repeatedly wrong, you pay a price, you may lose your job. what if you're a professional pundit and you blow i like these folks. >> win by a landslide, it will
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be the biggest surprise in recent american political history. >> i got this romney three points. >> i'm picking romney to narrowly win. >> this just further evidence why i believe he will sweep the midwest and win this election going away, and i'm now predicting a 330 electoral vote landslide. yes, that's right. 330 election tral votes. >> all of my thinking says romney big. >> romney big, romney landslide. jane hall, should pun dids pay any price for being spectacularly wrong? >> i think it should run under there. karl rove is the best and worst example of a man who yazed $300 million. i'm sure they're trying to figure out what happened and why didn't anybody win. >> that's his political role? >> his pun dead arm. he's writing op-eds. dick still there. there's no penalty. you're being asked to pundit
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ooize again. >> here's the thing. i don't want to blame the media being part of the media, but let's face it. there's going to be a lot more interest if someone says unlike what's been said before, if someone says risky or daring or counterintuitive. you know, why should we care what november these guys have to say in the first place? >> well, because presumably they're smart students of politics who understand the electoral trans and polling. or ty look good on tv or cute. i don't know. >> because they have something interesting to say and that's why they're getting booked. >> it's relatively new to have political operatives be pundits. >> i want to come to that point. we have to point out. conservative commentators were rooting for a romney victory. and i'm not saying this to beat up on the right. if barack obama had lost this election and there were a lot of liberals out there, i would ask the same question. does that undermine their
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credibility? >> i think it does. dick morris's comments for the hill. he wrote a mia kulpa. i think the left and the right. they can't separate their rooting interest sometimes. they think, okay. romney can -- they look at -- cherry pick certain data to say he's going win and clearly there were some major mistakes. think four years from now you're going to remember that. if they make a prediction -- >> nobody's going to remember this four years from now. they're going to come out with four fancy new sets and say here's why i think marco rubio or jeb bush is going to make it, you name it. obviously karl rove took a lot of heat from it. were these honest miscalculations because everybody in the business mangs mistakes and they try to paut on the crystal ball or were they trying to be partisan
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cheerleaders. >> when i saw long faces i knew the rom anyone campaign told fox they were going to lose way before it happened if you really read the tea leaves. i don't know. the interesting thing is if you were a viewer to fox, including romney, you aplarnl had trouble believing what reality was because you had been so told -- snowed is the word i think we used to use. >> you don't think fox viewers went into election night thinking this would be a close election? >> i don't know. but all i know is they clicked off right at after it wasdy claired. >> in other words, the polling was wrong and, you know, some number of republicans i talked to, republican analysts say there use going to be so much more enthusiasm on the gop side to get obama out of the white house that you have to way these polls differently. >> this is what happens. if you cover a campaign, you even been in that position you receive's in the bum. you're surrounded by people who are voting your way, and
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wherever you go there are big crowds and it becomes very hard to look at any hard data that counter acts the feeling you have around you. >> how did we get into this whole sort of culture of prediction? i mean the media have always kind of given you a wink, a nod, a lean this way or that way. here's what's likely to happen. now you come out there and say mitt romney's going to win in a landslide and you hope you're right. >> it's more blatant than it used to be. all of it is geared toward who's going to win. >> you could say, the jets are going to win big on sunday. this is the democracy at stake. is it that the rewards are such that you've got be out there but stick your neck out and read the tea leaves? >> i think so. it's provideo cameraive and gets headlines. >> if it's not clear to me, the
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data would seem to indicate you don't get invited back. >> and you don't get picked up on line. >> amy argetsinger and bob cusack. thanks for joining us. veteran reporter tom ricks in a moment. i am probably going to the gas station about once a month. last time i was at a gas station was about...i would say... two months ago. i very rarely put gas in my chevy volt. i go to the gas station such a small amount that i forget how to put gas in my car. [ male announcer ] and it's not just these owners giving the volt high praise. volt received the j.d. power and associates appeal award two years in a row. ♪
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the media furor cast a harsh like on the world's most famous general. it may have affected his coverage including affair that prompted his resignation as cia director. joining me is thomas ricks. tom, welcome. >> thank you. >> based on this book, the generals, one of them is general petraeus. you had one earlier called "the gamble." fair to say i think you're an admirer of petraeus? >> yes, and i remain so. >> and what's it like working with him in terms of his working
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with the press? >> you need to use the media to get your views out, that it's a responsibility of a general to explain to the american people what you're doing with their money and their children in some war overseas, and so he engaged and he use thad megaphone to explain this is what i'm doing, this is what i'm trying to do. >> that's an interesting verb," use" the media. some would see that as manipulating the media. >> i think he did that too. so did dwight eisenhower, explaining it to people, routinely holding press conferences, talking to reporters. >> how much of that courtship and exchange of e-mails and journali journalism, has that affected everything more than he might have gotten otherwise? >> no, i don't think. actually i think the media has been in full shark bite frenzy
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without regard. if anything i find the real scandal or one of the scandals here is how much the media has turned on petraeus. here's a guy who has four combat tours in recent years. that's more combat time than any american general had in world war ii, who has a smashed pelvis from a parachuting accident, who has a bullet wound through the chest from a training accident. he and his family, and i include his wife holly petraeus in, that have given enormously in the last ten years, yet when this scandal broke, we as a country were not as generous with him as his family had been with the country. >> you seem to be suggesting that journalists are biting the hand that fed them, they were perfectly happy with general petraeus when he was on top. suddenly this scandal, fall from grace, huge tabloid style, and you say the press has turned against him. i've seen a lot of people like
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yourself who have known him and the family, it seemed -- >> it's a matter that should have remained private, first of all. it's not a criminal act. there's no allegation that he's commit add crime. you know, it could always change. but here he was in a relationship with a consenting adult who was not in his chain of command. he's hardly, i think, probably the first cia director to have had an affair. this begins with another scandal which is the fbi investigating a lover's quarrel, which i think is an abuse of taxpayers' dollars. >> you think he should not have resigned. >> no, i don't think he should have. >> and you're saying -- i think it became public once he resigned. i think president obama should have said you made a big mig stake, make amends to your wife
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and you're going back to work. they should have said this is a private matter involving a mistrust by petraeus and he's dealt with it. >> you'd have that view with any former four-star you hadn't dealt with? >> i'd have that view with anybody who's given great service to the country. i just don't understand the frenzy of going after this guy. there is no allegation of crime. it's even worse with john allen, this marine general, who sends a bench of e-mails to a woman and he's suddenly involved in scandal. news flash, david petraeus is a human being, number two, a general is sending e-mails to a woman. a scandal is john allen, a fine general, being dragged into this
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mess and people thinking it's part of a scandal. a scandal is fbi looking at a lovers quarrels. >> a scandal -- >> you believe the media's priorities are completely screwed up in the sense that the serious questions of running a war and serious careers have been consuminged, overshadows, off the screen so to speak in favor of the focus on sex and scandal. let's face it. the cia director resigns. it's hard not to cover the story, but you think that the -- we are scandal-insaysed in this business? >> yes. i was thinking earlier i'm glad i'm no long were "the washington post" because i would have been pressured to cover this and i would have been really conflicted. it is in a moral a
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miscalculation of priorities. we in the nation seem to be more concerned about the sex lives of our generals and that the real lives of our soldiers. i actually printed out something before i came over here today. it's a great trivia question. excuse me. in my service i need to use glasses. who is sergeant channing b. hicks? who is specialist joe sif richardson? the answer is they were two soldiers who died last friday in afghanistan. everybody knows paula broadwell's names. nobody knows sold eiers who are dying in afghanistan. >> you think the media has become unfair to paula broadwell and david petraeus? >> yeah. we've basically set these people on fire. they were consenting adults engaged in private acts. the lack of decency, i think, is kind of appalling to me.
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i mean also the consequences of what happens to these people. we don't have so many good leaders that we can throw them away casually. general petraeus stood out notably more so than his piers. the question is you can be a mediocre general as long as you keep your pants on. >> in other words, you're not proud of the media at this point. >> no, i'm abashed. we don't talk about the wars until there's son titillating scandal. tom ricks, thanks very much for stopping by. appreciate it. after the break are the media playing an incendiary role when it comes to racial stories. we talk to eric degreeness in a moment. i was saving big on car insurance. with snapshot, i knew what i could save before i switched to progressive. the better i drive, the more i save. i wish our company had something this cool.
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race remains the constant. do they handle questions with restraint or do too many play an inflammatory role in reporting such stories. joins us now from tampa is eric deggans and awe thof o the new
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book "race-baiter." eric, welcome. >> thanks for having me. >> let's start with bill o'reilly calling you -- and you've put this in the top of the book, one of the biggest race-baiters in america. how did he react when you challenged him on that? >> it was interesting. he was giving a speech in sarasota close too my st. petersburg home. i was invited to take part in a news conference he was holding right before his speech and when i asked him about this, he wouldn't really engage. he said he'd have to see the exact words he said. i asked him about this idea that white people couldn't talk to black people about race because it's too explosive and he recounted some of the times when he felt like he had been unfairly maligned for the way that he talked about race. i don't think we really had a
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meeting of the minds. >> you are really rough on fox news. seems that's painting with an awfully broad brush. >> i guess in one way you could say i'm being tough on them but really i'm outlining a program structure that's seemed to emerge on that channel where i felt they have unfairly singled out these instances where balm people seem to be threatening or seem to have done something untoward, and in the case of shirley sherrod, you know, we had a woman who was at least talked about on some of their opinion shows. we talking these things and try to understand why people. >> just to remind people, shirley sherrod was the former agricultural official who was the focus of a deceptively edited video who made her appear
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to be racist when she was just the opposite. the next day he apologized and said he hadn't done his home work. when you say it's a consistent programming strategy, you're not saying it's the individual hosts that you have a problem with but the whole network demonizes the black people and that seems overstated. >> well in the book i did point out that built o'reilly did apologize about her but there were others. and in that chapter, i point out several different instances where fox hosts seemed to cross the line in terms of talking about scary black people and either offered these sort of very unofficial apologies that were not disciplined.
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and i think when you see something happen over and over and over again and i've been talking about how bill o'reilly talks about race on fox, since 2002, and when you see something like this happen again and again and again and people are not significantly disciplined, it takes forever, you know, for there to be some fallout for glenn beck on called barack obama racist on the air, you really have to question how seriously they are worried about how these incidents are viewed and whether or not they're willing to at least crack down so they don't happen again. >> you've also criticized msnbc for hiring al sharpton who's not a journalist but an activist. >> i've been on your shows -- >> particularly with regard to the trayvon martin case in your state of florida. >> exactly. and in the book i talk a little bit about how he toggled between these roles of acting as a spokesman for the trayvon martin
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family and also hosting a show that talkeden the news on msn m and how that might erode people's confidence in the honest brokered status in even people who express opinions on cable television. th there has to be some sense of an honest brokerage. that has always troubled me. >> could it be said, eric, that you as a black journalist that you are sensitive on this subject and yo are playing out racial aspects of many of these stories? >> i mean the point of the title of the book is when you try to talk about these issues the first thing that some people do is try to accuse you of being overly sensitive, but i think in the book i tried very hard to present opposing points of view.
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i tried very hard to reach out to some of the people i criticized the most and give them a chance to say what they felt they were doing. but at the same time, when you want to talk about these issues, do you have to have a sense of what's going on, look at studies, you have to talk to experts, and you have to be willing to endure a certain amount of criticism yourself and preenlt these points of view and say, you know, there's a problem here. and think we realize in this run-up to the election, seeing as how people talk about the 47%, talked about a food stamp president, seeing how people sort of sloughed off the working poor and talked about how minorities and women voted because they got gifts, i think this kind of language, this kind of race-baiting and gender baiting is all around us and it's been around us throughout this political campaign and people are getting tired of it and they want some way to sort
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through it all and whauns's at risk and i try to put all of that in the book. >> eric deggans, i appreciate talking with you. thanks for joining us. >> thanks a lot, howie. ahead on "reliable sources," teenagers who tweeted about pennsylvania. did the website jezebel go too far? the editor will be h here in a moment. not today. [ male announcer ] bob has afib: atrial fibrillation not caused by a heart valve problem, a condition that puts him at greater risk for a stroke. [ gps ] turn left. i don't think so. [ male announcer ] for years, bob took warfarin, and made a monthly trip to the clinic to gehis blood tested. but not anymore. bob's doctor recommended a different option: once-a-day xarelto®. xarelto® is the first and only once-a-day prescription blood thinner for patients with afib not caused by a heart valve problem, that doesn't require routine blood monitoring. like warfarin, xarelto® is proven effective to reduce the risk of an afib-related stroke.
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there was some exceedingly ugly stuff on twitter after president obama was re-elected. some of these tweets written by high school students and exposed by jezebel, a website that usually focuses on women, sex, and gossip. they went a step further and called schools to ask if they were aware. joining us now is the editor in chief of jezebel, jessica coen. welcome. >> hi. >> how did you find out about these racist tweets in the first place? >> we were just doing a search for barack obama and taking a look at the twitter reaction and saw some unfortunate things and started doing things for racial slurs and so many tweets came up it was shocking. >> shocking. >> maybe not shocking but upsetting certainly.
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>> and then did you decide as a result of this shocking news to make an example of some of these students who had put out this racist trash? >> well, first we wanted to document what was going on. that was the first post but the story doesn't end with documenting it. it's important to report what happens after the tweets go out there. many of these students are actually representing their zools as parts of teams or they're looking for college scholarships and more importantly they're parts of institutions that have very clear codes against this part of hate speech. so what happen whence you put that sort of message out there? that's the question. we called the schools to find out. >> so when you took that extra step of calling school officials, school administrators, it sounds to some people, including me, an effort to get them punished, some people thought it was even bullying. >> no. what's going to happen is probably inevitable, yes, but we're another bullying bullies.
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they put their messages out there. they put their names on it. they're publicly part of these schools. to call an organization, when you find out an individual is part of an organization and they're acting in a manner that violates the codes of that organization, violates the codes of that organization, as a reporter it makes sense to call that organization. >> i would never want to defend this kind of hate speech, but these are teenagers. what you just said certainly would be the case if dealing with anybody who's an adult, but by taking this extra step and calling the schools, it seemed like you wanted to make sure your reporting it an outcome as opposed to letting the schools deal with this on their own. >> i don't think it matters they're teenagers. i understand there are protections legally when it comes to minors, but these kids weren't actually breaking the law, they were just demonstrating some really awful
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speech and really reflecting in sid u us thought process. they need to learn, everybody needs to learn there's no divide between real life and online. what you say online is just as important as what you say in real life. so i don't think it matters what actually happens to the kids at the schools per se. we're not acting as judges or juries, our responsibility is just to the story. >> but again, the stuff was just awful, some of it i can't repeat on the air. >> absolutely. >> some of these kids are 15, 16, 17, some repeating what they heard their parents say. >> but they're old enough tto know exactly what they're saying. i don't care if you're 15 or 16, i think no one would disagree that those kids didn'n't know wt they were saying. they were expressing dissatisfaction with the election, they were upset that barack obama was president. they knew they were using negative, offensive words to express their disappointment. >> but didn't think anybody outside their circle of friends
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would see it probably. >> i don't know what they thought, that's the thing. we're talking about a native population of users here. the internet was thriving by the time these kids were born. so really it follows that they should actually know exactly that the message is going out there, and they should know exactly how twitter works. maybe they didn't think anyone would find it, but when you are using words that are incendiary and people look to see the larger public reaction involving those words, of course their tweets are going to come up. >> so jessica, part of your goal here in addition to going after the hateful speech posted online by these particular high school students was kind of to teach a lesson to a lot of younger people who may just think their facebook and twitter postings exist within this protected world and can't get them into trouble? is that part of what's going on here? >> i mean, we're not actively trying to teach anyone anything. hopefully the general public pulls some information out of
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what happened here, but we're not shaking our fingers, saying you better learn next time. that's not our position or role. >> did they produce traffic for jezebel? >> sure, absolutely. >> i guess you touched a nerve, and the thing is by posting the tweets themselves, you showed the ugliness and some of the language against the president. >> and to come from the mouths of children is incredibly upsetting and really disturbing. we talk about racism in this country and it is such a timely nature with barack obama and the election, it's going to kind of set off a fire storm of controversy. people are very involved in this issue, they're -- it's very emotional for a lot of people, very sensitive. there's a huge historical and political context there, and yes, those stories traditionally will get a lot of attention. >> jezebel did precisely that. jessica coen, thanks for joining us. appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. still to come, a great american novelist lays down his
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pen. latest thoughts on phillip rolf. these smartphones come with a bonus $100 walmart gift card?
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i could hardly believe it when phillip roth said he is giving up writing. he has written 31 books since 1959, including classics
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good-bye columbus, zuckerman outbound, the human stain, and i read most of them. in a three our sit down with "the new york times," roth provides fascinating insight into writing fiction. he said i knew i wasn't going to get another good idea, or if i did, i'd have to slave over it. i know i'm not going to write as well as i used to. i no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. writing is frustration, daily frustration, not to mention u mill agency. it is like baseball, you fail two-thirds of the time. i can't face any more days when i write five pages and throw them away. i can't do that any more. boy do i know that feeling. writing and good writing involves going to the keyboard again and again. >> i think i write as publish as often as i can bear being
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without a book to work on, but routinely when i finish a book, i think what will i do? where will i get an idea? and a kind of low level panic sets in. and then eventually something happens. if i knew how it happened, i would repeat the process, but i don't know, something just occurs to me. >> but now he's done, roth is spending his time cooperating with a biographer, and i love this part, playing with his new iphone. part of me says you're too talented, you can't give up writing. he is 79. i guess he earned the right to take it easy. that's it for this edition. hope you enjoy this weekend. go to itunes monday, get a podcast or buy the video version. search for reliable sources in the itunes store. back next sunday 11:00 a.m. eastern for another critical look at the media.